I’ve been making my way through the book “Teaching Entrepreneurship.”  As I mentioned back in November when I began reading, the first section of the book is a theoretical overview of what entrepreneurship is, outlining the broad characteristics of an entrepreneurship mindset.  The authors settle on five key components for entrepreneurial thinking; play, empathy, creativity, experimentation, and reflection.  This 5 pronged approach to teaching entrepreneurship then informs the structure for the rest of the book, which is to provide an overview of instructional strategies associated with the 5 major components.

What is perhpas most refreshing for me is just how practice-oriented the book is.  It is, at its heart, a collection of instructional strategies.  There is a broad variety of activities.  From encouraging students to play by learning improv and building marshmallow towers, to building empathy by practicing and analyzing negotiation simulations and exploring the impact of unfair pay schemes with imaginary monkeys , the examples are varied and most importantly, fun.  

The strategies and activities tend to start from more abstract, and move towards more concretely related to specific skills involved in business creation and venturing.  Exercises designed to build empathy might start with a general activity observing “users” or “clients” engaged in a common practice – like using an ATM machine.  Then they move to more specific cases, like developing a fictional customer persona for the type of person who might use the service or product related to a business plan that the student is currently developing.

What strikes me as a common element of these activities, is the need for students – our would-be entrepreneurs – to develop a truly flexible mindset towards their work and the market or social settings within which they intend to create and venture.  In such uncertain conditions, and with so many shifting variables, it is essential that students don’t get bogged down in too linear of thinking.  It’s as if we need students who take the work very seriously, but don’t take themselves or any specific solution too seriously – they don’t become overcommitted to any one solution.

This type of thinking and practice is in many cases the opposite of what we teach in schools.  Typically, we ask students to apply algorithms and rules to determine a single correct solution.  A commitment to teaching entrepreneurship will help our teachers and classrooms move increasingly away from this type of linear problem solving.  Indeed, the challenges in how we teach math and science are particularly well-documented.  We would do well to encourage play, empathy, creativity, experimentation, and reflection across all of our subject areas.